A bad night

Every parent works on the basis that their kids are 'very advanced for their age' and I am no exception. So I wasn't surprised that yesterday I had to undergo several rounds of Paxman like under-9 questioning on the subject of the local elections - 'Who are we voting for dad?', 'Why?', 'What does the council do?', 'I thought you said they were rubbish' etc etc.

End result: the kids know we vote Labour for the same reason we support Everton - because we do, and err well that's that. Because they were all born post '97 they also know that its a long time - well in their time-frame anyway- since Labour and Everton actually won a great deal*. I suspect they also can't quite understand why Dad (who according to the laws of parenthood should be pretty much infallible and the font of all knowledge) seems to have the unfailing knack of backing losers.

Of course, none of this is new. I went through exactly the same experience in the early 80's - a pretty bleak time for a young Evertonian, from a labour voting family, with a Dad who worked in Cammell Lairds. Yes those were great years for Labour voting Blues who worked in ship-yards! Its character-building anyway...

On the serious side, its clear that in large parts of the country the Labour vote simply stayed at home. More damagingly a very small, but still worrying, number of traditional Labour voters decided to take a punt on the BNP - landing them 15 seats. What little good news there was came relatively local to me - with Labour making small gains in both Manchester and Liverpool; and both cities, along with Newcastle, staying Conservative free zones.

How did Labour do in your part of the country? Did you even vote - or were you part of the 67% who stayed at home?

* Yes I know, 3 terms and all that but I'm trying to make a slightly stretched point here!